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Let’s see if I’ve got this straight:
Harry Reid says he supports another term for Bernanke as Fed Chair . . .
. . . through a written statement released by his office . . .
. . . after the markets close . . .
. . . on a Friday . . .
. . . though he awaits certain plans from Bernanke on how Ben’s going to do the job he already has.
Yeah, that’s a ringing endorsement.
Oh, and while Harry was issuing his ringing endorsement, Sheila Bair and the FDIC continued doing their job, seizing five more banks yesterday: Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Washington state, and Oregon. These five banks had combined assets of over $3.1B, deposits over $2.6B, and the FDIC estimates that the Deposit Insurance Fund will take a total hit of $531.7M. This follows the news on Tuesday that the FDIC has opened a temporary new office outside Chicago, to “manage receiverships and liquidate assets from failed institutions” in the Midwest.
But that’s OK, because Harry Reid is convinced that Bernanke is on top of things, and so is Reid himself.
Right before Reid’s office released that ringing endorsement, they released another statement commemorating NV’s unemployment rate officially topping 13% in December. UNLV researchers put the actual number closer to 25%, once you include unemployed people who are too discouraged to actively look for work, and folks who grabbed a part time job because they can’t find a fulltime one. Reid’s reaction to this news: “Now is the time to set aside partisanship and stop bickering.”
I’m sure that makes everyone feel better, and I mean everyone — the 13% of the folks in Nevada who are unemployed, the 12% who are underemployed or who have given up on being employed, and especially Ben Bernanke who doesn’t want to join the ranks of the unemployed himself.
Good luck with that, Mr. Chairman. You’ve got one week for Reid to scare up the votes.
photograph courtesy of oddharmonic
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Bernanke sat right in front of the Senate a few weeks back, and when asked, refused to say where the billions went. Didn’t know couldn’t tell ya. Why does anybody accept that?
Nice post, Peterr. Not sure I would want Reid’s endorsement. He’s probably going to lose his own election.
Yep just more change we can believe in.
Peterr,
I’m not a religious person, but if I were, I would pray fervently to my God for Harry Reid’s defeat in his next run for the senate.
Thanks.
Sounds like Reid backs him 1000% percent. Also sounds like Nevadans back Reid 1000%. What could go wrong?
*snicker*
Are you hinting that you won’t be going to Nevada to campaign for him? s/
…Mr. Chairman. You’ve got one week for Reid to scare up the votes.
heh. yeah, that’s who *I* would want in my corner. Hammerin’ Harry.
He’s doomed.
I’m just sick and tired of all these huge FAILURES who have the gall to think they are entitled to keep their cushy high-profile jobs, instead of having the decency and dignity to go home and quietly kill themselves to show remorse for their track record of abject and cataclismic incompetence.
It’s not like we don’t have zillions of qualified people available to take those jobs and start with a clean slate.
If Bernake is confirmed, there will be even more pissed off people. I’m beginning to think all Dems, from Obama on down, are completely clueless about what is going on in the country.
Everytime Reid talks I mute my TV, one of the voices that conjures up weakness and whinyness, sortalike Liarman.
Altho I must confess that Obama gets the mute treatment nowadays as well.
I know I want to stop all this bickering. What could be more important than that?
Pretty soon Reid will have his Lieberman whine down to perfection and as the time gets close for him to be tossed out of office, I imagine he will be blubbering all over the place.
Yes, yes I am *g*
true health care reform?
Between Obama, Reid and the Congress and now the SCOTUS the electorate is being besieged from all sides.
In Obama all we have thus far is talk, something in which he delights but is of no use to anyone. In the Reid led Congress we have a group of legislators mired in inertia. And in the SCOTUS we have a group of cheap already discredited judges making divided rulings that strike at the democratic system of governance.
What all three of these cases illustrate is the complete subservience each shows to big business interests. Obama is enthralled with the so called free market system and its dominant players, while Congress is at the mercy of corporate donations and the high court devotes itself to further entrenching big business interests in the shaping of government for their own benefit.
This awful trifecta leaves the country with no option but to revolt in some manner and to insist on fundamental changes. Obama must be replaced by someone of courage and principle. The Congress especially the Senate must be reduced and their capacity to wreak havoc must be limited. And the monumentally skewed and dangerous rulings of the court must be overturned.
A full plate for the elctorate, for sure, and sadly one that has come about from years of neglect by the people in the affairs of how its government is run. Maybe this sad state of affairs will lead people to doubt that the US is number one and the best democracy in the world.
I agree. And of course, no Democrats were involved in starting the move to deny Bernanke a second term. It was independent socialist Bernie Sanders (yay, Bernie!) and Republican Jim Bunning. That’s what it’s come down to — the plutocratic crypto-fascist Republicans are more populist than the spineless Dems.
Excellent post. Thanks.
Couple of resources. Here and Here.
I heard yesterday that Reid explicitly said after he met with Bernanke on Thurs that he had some doubts.
And if this statement yesterday was the best the White House could get out of Reid…
Still, I doubt Bernarnke will be booted.
Pretty soon Reid will have his Lieberman whine down to perfection
So that’s what he’s been working on? Now it’s all starting to make sense…
soon Reid will there with the 13%. guess he feels safe Obama will continue to extend unemployment bennies.
Well, that and making paper airplanes out of bills that cross his desk.
He’s an aeronautical engineer too? Who knew?
LOL.
Brilliant man and we bow to his acumen and wisdom.
s/
People who say that Reid can save himself because of all his campaign cash are kidding themselves. There is no way Reid will get re-elected if unemployment stays that high or higher come November. And all the campaign cash in the world won’t change it.
Karl Denninger of “The Market Ticker” neatly lists the reasons Bernanke must go.
“No, the real reason he cannot be reconfirmed is that he has continued to refuse responsibility for anything related to the mess in the first place, and yet Ben Bernanke has the lion’s share of individual responsibility for what has happened.
He has refused to regulate the banks.
He has refused to protect consumers against predatory acts.
He has intentionally grown credit aggregates at a rate dramatically faster than GDP over the space of his entire term and in fact influenced Greenspan doing the same, which is the root cause of the last two bubbles and market crashes.
He has dogmatically stuck to his doctoral thesis even after it has been proved wrong by the passage of time and the market.
He has intentionally concealed the terms of bailouts and handouts that were funneled through the banks on his watch, including but not limited to AIG’s bailout that was funneled to Goldman Sachs among others.
He has not supported the market – he in fact became the market for Fannie and Freddie securities, putting himself into a box from which he has failed to explain how he will exit (likely because he now realizes he can’t!)
He has been dead wrong in virtually every public pronouncement related to the economy over the last five years, including his repeated claims that there was no housing bubble, that subprime would be contained, that the economy would avoid a recession and that his monetary policies were “supportive” of sustainable growth in the economy. Not one of those claims from 2003-2007 was in fact true.
For all these reasons and more Bernanke cannot be reconfirmed.”
So, I have one simple question. What exactly does someone working with the federal government have to do before they get the boot?
The bigger the crime the tighter they embrace.
Would you fly on anything he had a hand in designing.
Not to fear his returning to engineering, since Obama will campaign for his reelection. That will really fly in NV ;-}
Exactly. It’s unbelieveable. Congressional hearings are now a full blown sham.
The entire Beltway cesspool is one big crime syndicate operating in plain sight and we’re their prey.
Would you fly on anything he had a hand in designing.
All I need is some goggles and a scarf.
And two chutes that I packed myself, of course…
Yeah, like didn’t Coakley and her outside supporters outspend Brown and his outside supporters?
The only conceiveable answer is that the big banks and other financial institutions have benefited from his policies. Supporting the financial sector is the aim of this government. Measured by this criteria in the eyes of the government from Obama down Bernanke has done well.
Yeah, which is why he’ll be confirmed.
All the chatter about the possibility of Bernanke not being confirmed is nonsense designed to assuage the sweaty masses till they change the headlines.
Bunning is not populist. He and his friends just didn’t make enough money from the bailout. A few billion from the Fed in his direction would fix that problem.
With that record, he should be promoted.
Obama & Co need a fall guy.
Just brainstorming here:
Obama & Co might step forward and volunteer, as fall guy. His skill set is expended. Which is the election and honymoon segment. Now he is coming to a rough patch where there is need for something different. He is starting to show signs. He can’t fill that character profile, and no fault of his.
Time to call central casting and send over some talent who can show some blood in the eye and make em set still, and get this buggy to Zaragossa. “President O’biden… hmm.